


no holy place existed without us then

by AceQueenKing



Category: Circe - Madeline Miller
Genre: AU: Telemachus and Telegonus leave together - Leaving Circe and Penelope on the Island, Alternate Ending, F/F, POV First Person, Rituals, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 20:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17793992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Circe and Penelope prepare a ritual bath together.





	no holy place existed without us then

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



Of all the things Odysseus had sang of his wife to me, he failed to mention her hands. So much I had learned of her from him: her unyielding fidelity, her unrelenting belief, and her understated craftiness...These he told me of, in loud but gentle boasts. She was a phantom he clung tight to his chest, even in my bed; who taught him such manners? His wife. Who was he trying to go home to? His wife. When he looked to the wide horizon, who did he look for? His wife, his wife, his wife.  
  
Once I had said her name as a little peevish curse, a daring challenge: _he is here with me_ , I thought; _come take him if you dare_! I had rejoiced then, as a haughty child who murmurs curses toward the gods and rejoices when they are ignored, never realizing that the only reason they are not dust under a god's heel lies in the fact that they are not worthy of being noticed.  
  
And then, all too quickly, he became a ghost, and now, her phantom was here. Let it not be said the Gods held no sense of humor. It was not until I met her that I realized how little Odysseus' words had prepared me for her: she was beautiful in the way only a female mortal of a certain age could be. Unlike our kind, she wore the marks of her age; her hands had puckered skin, the veins slightly pronounced.  
                                                                   
I had never seen anything so beautiful as she.

Gods love everything taboo to us, and there is nothing so taboo to us as aging, as degrading.  We cannot do such and thus it holds endless fascination. What is it to live, knowing one will one day die? I am still learning to tell that story, but it is comfortable to do so with her by my side.

"Cut at stem or bud?" Penelope asked quietly, with hands that did not shake. The knife never did waver in those hands of hers, and my heart quailed as I looked at them. Such hands. Why had he told me nothing of their power?  
  
"Stem," I told her; she nodded, made the cut. Quick and clean.  Odysseus had not mentioned the strength in those hands; the more I knew of her, the more I realized how despite his best efforts, he could not tell me of her true wonder. Only in the ways that she had touched _him_ , which were, of course, different than the ways she touched _me_. I watched as she took her quarry, precious oregano, and held it to her nose.   
  
"The scent is strong," she murmured. "We should use it for the ceremony tonight."  
  
Oh how my heart beat for that. Never had I had such a strong student.  I cut my own herbs; marathon for longevity, rosemary for memory. I pulled a bit of sage, but not too much; having held immortality in my grasp once, I would not wish it upon her. I can tell from the clean _snickt_ of her blade that she had pulled thyme for clear dreams,  a soft burst of sweet fragrant saffron as she beheaded some of Hermes' old crocuses. As apt a metaphor for our relationship as any, that; we are both cleaving from what went before.  
  
I smiled.  "Come," I said, and so we went. Like Odysseus, she spoke only when necessary. She was better at speaking with her hands, with her deeds. No great storyteller, she, but she was, I suspect, craftier than Odysseus in her own ways. She never would have triggered Poseidon’s wrath, never would have wandered for ten long and lonely years. She had even avoided Athena's wrath, as much as was possible.  
  
Athena had taken our sons in the end, but she had spared us, and given her ruthless nature that was no minor feat. I had spit on her feet and dared her to take my boy, had cast spells to hold all gods but the death lord and his lady at bay; Penelope? Penelope had recognized it as inevitable and done what she could to lessen the blow. Let it not be said that mortals are not wiser than gods; in this, she bested me.  
  
But there was so much more to a woman than motherhood. That, too, I was learning, after so many wasted years fretting over being less than what I thought I must be.  
  
We gathered the herbs and took them to the house. She hung them in bunches of fragrant leaves, cutting and preparing them for the ritual. Her hands did not shake; no nerves paralyzed her.  
  
I put firewood into a pyre for our cauldron; happier, as I always was, with physical work to occupy my mind. This consumed most of the afternoon and for but a moment I wished the boys had not left us to chase Athena's glory; for now, with our aging bodies, the cutting of the wood was more difficult.  But it was a pleasing task none the less.  I liked to work for her; I caught her glancing upon me and knew she found my form pleasing.  
  
"You are shining," she said, her voice quiet but meaningful. I looked a bit of my father when I worked, the glow from deep inside shining in my sweat.  
  
"I am sweaty," I said; she nodded, appreciating the humility. She liked it when I disregarded the godliness in me; I think she was a rebel herself, if a quieter one than I.  
  
Penelope lit the fire; she was always better at that than me, in the power of destruction, in letting things go. Me? I went down to the sea's edge, pulled bucket after bucket of water. I could have used the baths in our bathroom with their magical ability to fill and refill with crystal clear water, but by unspoken agreement, we did not. A mortal ceremony deserved a mortal blessing, and how could we otherwise incorporate our ghosts, the boys and the man who had vanished in the sea of our tears?  
  
I tossed in the satchels of herbs she had prepared; they were fragrant, potent. We carried the water back up to the bath from that; it was a struggle, required both our shaking arms as we carried it into our household, up our stairs. It took many trips, yet we did not complain.

When it was done, we stripped down; I took longer, for I watched her disrobe, fascinated by the wrinkles, the scars. She was a beautiful thing; her body told a story, and it told it to me without words.

“Are you coming?” Grey-eyed Penelope said, and I nodded, a lump growing in my throat even as I undid my own gown. I, a former goddess, felt vulnerable in front of this mortal woman, whose entire life thus far had passed in a brief summer of my own lifeline. 

She stepped into the water and my breath caught in my throat, seeing her there, floating in the fragrant, purifying waters. She was a beautiful thing; her body like an Ithacan coast-line: scrawny, rocky, but elegant in its sparseness, in the irregular bends of its shores.

Only there did my own nerves begin to flutter in my stomach; I, who had been nervous of so little in my days. “Are you sure you wish to stay here?” I asked, in my mortal-reedy voice; it was not too late to follow our sons on Athena's quest for glory, if only at a distance. I had no desire to cheat my beloved; unlike for Oddyseus, I laid my arms bare for her. “I am not beloved by the Gods, Penelope; you are staying on an exiled land, and little more will the gods smile upon you, if you stay. I do not wish you to feel cursed by their mocking or their absense.”

“Let them mock. I care little. I have had a spouse blessed by a God,” she said, standing from that water and reaching for my naked hand, pulling me toward her as if she were Scylla and I, Charybdis. “I should not like to have such, again. I have had enough of Gods; I want only the woman Circe, for all the days we have left to share.”

 “Then you shall have her,” I said, and with my hawk-eyes, I took her as my prey. I climbed into the purifying bath, and sealed our union with a kiss.  There would be no chariot races, no boasts or toast made; it was not a wedding, after all. That was long past us both, now. But still, in a way, we made in ourselves a glorious union; the sacred female ouroboros, never-ending in its love-spell. It was fealty, of a sort, an agreement to love and be loved, so long as we lived. The time had come for us to reject the world of  gods and legends. Now, it was our time to discover ourselves. 

We would have our island, and our witch-work.

And that was more than enough.


End file.
